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John Halifax, Gentleman

D >> Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik) >> John Halifax, Gentleman




Between that time and dinner I sat quiet enough even to please Jael.
I was thinking over the beautiful old Bible story, which latterly had
so vividly impressed itself on my mind; thinking of Jonathan, as he
walked "by the stone Ezel," with the shepherd-lad, who was to be king
of Israel. I wondered whether he would have loved him, and seen the
same future perfection in him, had Jonathan, the king's son, met the
poor David keeping his sheep among the folds of Bethlehem.

When my father came home he found me waiting in my place at table.
He only said, "Thee art better then, my son?" But I knew how glad he
was to see me. He gave token of this by being remarkably conversible
over our meal--though, as usual, his conversation had a sternly moral
tone, adapted to the improvement of what he persisted in considering
my "infant" mind. It had reference to an anecdote Dr. Jessop had
just been telling him--about a little girl, one of our doctor's
patients, who in some passionate struggle had hurt herself very much
with a knife.

"Let this be a warning to thee, my son, not to give way to violent
passions." (My good father, thought I, there is little fear.) "For,
this child--I remember her father well, for he lived at Kingswell
here; he was violent too, and much given to evil ways before he went
abroad--Phineas, this child, this miserable child, will bear the mark
of the wound all her life."

"Poor thing!" said I, absently.

"No need to pity her; her spirit is not half broken yet. Thomas
Jessop said to me, 'That little Ursula--'"

"Is her name Ursula?" And I called to mind the little girl who had
tried to give some bread to the hungry John Halifax, and whose cry of
pain we heard as the door shut upon her. Poor little lady! how sorry
I was. I knew John would be so infinitely sorry too--and all to no
purpose--that I determined not to tell him anything about it. The
next time I saw Dr. Jessop I asked him after the child, and learned
she had been taken away somewhere, I forgot where; and then the whole
affair slipped from my memory.

"Father," said I, when he ceased talking--and Jael, who always ate
her dinner at the same time and table as ourselves, but "below the
salt," had ceased nodding a respectful running comment on all he
said--"Father?"

"Well, my son."

"I should like to go with thee to the tan-yard this afternoon."

Here Jael, who had been busy pulling back the table, replacing the
long row of chairs, and re-sanding the broad centre Sahara of the
room to its dreary, pristine aridness, stopped, fairly aghast with
amazement.

"Abel--Abel Fletcher! the lad's just out of his bed; he is no more
fit to--"

"Pshaw, woman!" was the sharp answer. "So, Phineas, thee art really
strong enough to go out?"

"If thou wilt take me, father."

He looked pleased, as he always did when I used the Friends' mode of
phraseology--for I had not been brought up in the Society; this
having been the last request of my mother, rigidly observed by her
husband. The more so, people said, as while she lived they had not
been quite happy together. But whatever he was to her, in their
brief union, he was a good father to me, and for his sake I have
always loved and honoured the Society of Friends.

"Phineas," said he (after having stopped a volley of poor Jael's
indignations, beseechings, threats, and prognostications, by a
resolute "Get the lad ready to go")--"Phineas, my son, I rejoice to
see thy mind turning towards business. I trust, should better health
be vouchsafed thee, that some day soon--"

"Not just yet, father," said I, sadly--for I knew what he referred
to, and that it would never be. Mentally and physically I alike
revolted from my father's trade. I held the tan-yard in abhorrence--
to enter it made me ill for days; sometimes for months and months I
never went near it. That I should ever be what was my poor father's
one desire, his assistant and successor in his business, was, I knew,
a thing totally impossible.

It hurt me a little that my project of going with him to-day should
in any way have deceived him; and rather silently and drearily we set
out together; progressing through Norton Bury streets in our old way,
my father marching along in his grave fashion, I steering my little
carriage, and keeping as close as I could beside him. Many a person
looked at us as we passed; almost everybody knew us, but few, even of
our own neighbours, saluted us; we were Nonconformists and Quakers.

I had never been in the town since the day I came through it with
John Halifax. The season was much later now, but it was quite warm
still in the sunshine, and very pleasant looked the streets, even the
close, narrow streets of Norton Bury. I beg its pardon; antiquaries
hold it a most "interesting and remarkable" place: and I myself have
sometimes admired its quaint, overhanging, ornamented house-fronts--
blackened, and wonderfully old. But one rarely notices what has been
familiar throughout life; and now I was less struck by the beauty of
the picturesque old town than by the muddiness of its pathways, and
the mingled noises of murmuring looms, scolding women, and squabbling
children, that came up from the alleys which lay between the High
Street and the Avon. In those alleys were hundreds of our poor folk
living, huddled together in misery, rags, and dirt. Was John Halifax
living there too?

My father's tan-yard was in an alley a little further on. Already I
perceived the familiar odour; sometimes a not unpleasant barky smell;
at other times borne in horrible wafts, as if from a lately forsaken
battle-field. I wondered how anybody could endure it--yet some did;
and among the workmen, as we entered, I looked round for the lad I
knew.

He was sitting in a corner in one of the sheds, helping two or three
women to split bark, very busy at work; yet he found time to stop now
and then, and administered a wisp of sweet hay to the old blind mare,
as she went slowly round and round, turning the bark mill. Nobody
seemed to notice him, and he did not speak to anybody.

As we passed John did not even see us. I asked my father, in a
whisper, how he liked the boy.

"What boy?--eh, him?--Oh, well enough--there's no harm in him that I
know of. Dost thee want him to wheel thee about the yard? Here, I
say, lad--bless me! I've forgot thy name."

John Halifax started up at the sharp tone of command; but when he saw
me he smiled. My father walked on to some pits where he told me he
was trying an important experiment, how a hide might be tanned
completely in five months instead of eight. I stayed behind.

"John, I want you."

John shook himself free of the bark-heap, and came rather
hesitatingly at first.

"Anything I can do for you, sir?"

"Don't call me 'sir'; if I say 'John,' why don't you say 'Phineas'?"

And I held out my hand--his was all grimed with bark-dust.

"Are you not ashamed to shake hands with me?"

"Nonsense, John."

So we settled that point entirely. And though he never failed to
maintain externally a certain gentle respectfulness of demeanour
towards me, yet it was more the natural deference of the younger to
the elder, of the strong to the weak, than the duty paid by a
serving-lad to his master's son. And this was how I best liked it to
be.

He guided me carefully among the tan-pits--those deep fosses of
abomination, with a slender network of pathways thrown between--until
we reached the lower end of the yard. It was bounded by the Avon
only, and by a great heap of refuse bark.

"This is not a bad place to rest in; if you liked to get out of the
carriage I'd make you comfortable here in no time."

I was quite willing; so he ran off and fetched an old horserug, which
he laid upon the soft, dry mass. Then he helped me thither, and
covered me with my cloak. Lying thus, with my hat over my eyes, just
distinguishing the shiny glimmer of the Avon running below, and
beyond that the green, level Ham, dotted with cows, my position was
anything but unpleasant. In fact, positively agreeable--ay, even
though the tan-yard was close behind; but here it would offend none
of my senses.

"Are you comfortable, Phineas?"

"Very, if you would come and sit down too."

"That I will."

And we then began to talk. I asked him if he often patronised the
bark-heap, he seemed so very much at home there.

"So I am," he answered, smiling; "it is my castle--my house."

"And not unpleasant to live at, either."

"Except when it rains. Does it always rain at Norton Bury?"

"For shame, John!" and I pointed to the bluest of autumn skies,
though in the distance an afternoon mist was slowly creeping on.

"All very fine now, but there's a fog coming over Severn; and it is
sure to rain at nightfall. I shall not get my nice little bit of
October evening."

"You must spend it within doors then." John shook his head. "You
ought; it must be dreadfully cold on this bark-heap after sunset."

"Rather, sometimes. Are you cold now? Shall I fetch--but I haven't
anything fit to wrap you in, except this rug."

He muffled it closer round me; infinitely light and tender was his
rough-looking boy's hand.

"I never saw anybody so thin as you; thinner much since I saw you.
Have you been very, very ill, Phineas? What ailed you?"

His anxiety was so earnest, that I explained to him what I may as
well explain here, and dismiss, once for all; the useless topic, that
from my birth I had been puny and diseased; that my life had been a
succession of sicknesses, and that I could hope for little else until
the end.

"But don't think I mind it; John;" for I was grieved to see his
shocked and troubled look. "I am very content; I have a quiet home,
a good father, and now I think and believe I have found the one thing
I wanted--a good friend."

He smiled, but only because I did. I saw he did not understand me.
In him, as in most strong and self-contained temperaments, was a
certain slowness to receive impressions, which, however, being once
received, are indelible. Though I, being in so many things his
opposite, had none of this peculiarity, but felt at once quickly and
keenly, yet I rather liked the contrary in him, as I think we almost
always do like in another those peculiarities which are most
different from our own. Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt
because the lad was slow to perceive all that he had so soon become,
and all that I meant him to become, to me. I knew from every tone of
his voice, every chance expression of his honest eyes, that he was
one of those characters in which we may be sure that for each feeling
they express lies a countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below;
a character the keystone of which was that whereon is built all
liking and all love--DEPENDABLENESS. He was one whom you may be long
in knowing, but whom the more you know the more you trust; and once
trusting, you trust for ever.

Perhaps I may be supposed imaginative, or, at least, premature in
discovering all these characteristics in a boy of fourteen; and
possibly in thus writing of him I may unwittingly be drawing a little
from after-experience; however, being the truth, let it stand.

"Come," said I, changing the conversation, "we have had enough of me;
how goes the world with you? Have you taken kindly to the tan-yard?
Answer frankly."

He looked at me hard, put both his hands in his pockets, and began to
whistle a tune.

"Don't shirk the question, please, John. I want to know the real
truth."

"Well, then, I hate the tan-yard."

Having relieved his mind by this ebullition, and by kicking a small
heap of tan right down into the river, he became composed.

"But, Phineas, don't imagine I intend to hate it always; I intend to
get used to it, as many a better fellow than I has got used to many a
worse thing. It's wicked to hate what wins one's bread, and is the
only thing one is likely to get on in the world with, merely because
it's disagreeable."

"You are a wise lad of your age, John."

"Now don't you be laughing at me." (But I was not, I was in solemn
earnest). "And don't think I'm worse than I am; and especially that
I'm not thankful to your good father for giving me a lift in the
world--the first I ever really had. If I get one foot on the ladder,
perhaps I may climb."

"I should rather believe so," answered I, very confidently. "But you
seem to have thought a good deal about these sort of things."

"Oh, yes! I have plenty of time for thinking, and one's thoughts
travel fast enough lying on this bark-heap--faster than indoors. I
often wish I could read--that is, read easily. As it is, I have
nothing to do but to think, and nothing to think of but myself, and
what I should like to be."

"Suppose, after Dick Whittington's fashion, you succeeded to your
master's business, should you like to be a tanner?"

He paused--his truthful face betraying him. Then he said,
resolutely, "I would like to be anything that was honest and
honourable. It's a notion of mine, that whatever a man may be, his
trade does not make him--he makes his trade. That is--but I know I
can't put the subject clear, for I have not got it clear in my own
head yet--I'm only a lad. However, it all comes to this--that
whether I like it or not, I'll stick to the tanning as long as I
can."

"That's right; I'm so glad. Nevertheless"--and I watched him as he
stood, his foot planted firmly, no easy feat on the shifting
bark-heap, his head erect, and his mouth close, but smiling--
"Nevertheless, John, it's my opinion that you might be anything you
liked."

He laughed. "Questionable that--at least at present. Whatever I may
be, I am just now the lad that drives your father's cart, and works
in your father's tan-yard--John Halifax, and very much at your
service, Mr. Phineas Fletcher."

Half in fun, half in earnest, he uncovered his fair locks, with a bow
so contradictory to the rest of his appearance, that I involuntarily
recalled the Greek Testament and "Guy Halifax, Gentleman." However,
that could be no matter to me, or to him either, now. The lad, like
many another, owed nothing to his father but his mere existence--
Heaven knows whether that gift is oftenest a curse or a boon.

The afternoon had waned during our talk; but I was very loth to part
with my friend. Suddenly, I thought of asking where his home was.

"How do you mean?"

"Where do you live? where do you take your meals and sleep?"

"Why, as to that, I have not much time for eating and drinking.
Generally I eat my dinner as I go along the road, where there's lots
of blackberries by way of pudding--which is grand! Supper, when I do
get it, I like best on this bark-heap, after the men are away, and
the tan-yard's clear. Your father lets me stay."

"And where is your lodging, then? Where do you sleep?"

He hesitated--coloured a little. "To tell the truth--anywhere I can.
Generally, here."

"What, out-of-doors?"

"Just so."

I was much shocked. To sleep out-of-doors seemed to me the very
lowest ebb of human misery: so degrading, too--like a common tramp
or vagabond, instead of a decent lad.

"John, how can you--why do you--do such a thing?"

"I'll tell you," said he, sitting down beside me in a dogged way, as
if he had read my thoughts, guessed at my suspicions, and was
determined to show that he feared neither--that he would use his own
judgment, and follow his own will, in spite of anybody. "Look here.
I get three shillings a week, which is about fivepence a day; out of
that I eat threepence--I'm a big, growing lad, and it's hard to be
hungry. There's twopence left to pay for lodging. I tried it once--
twice--at the decentest place I could find, but--" here an expression
of intolerable disgust came over the boy's face--"I don't intend to
try that again. I was never used to it. Better keep my own company
and the open air. Now you see."

"Oh, John!"

"Nay--there's no need to be sorry. You don't know how comfortable it
is to sleep out of doors; and so nice to wake in the middle of the
night and see the stars shining over your head."

"But isn't it very cold?"

"No--not often. I scoop out a snug little nest in the bark and curl
up in it like a dormouse, wrapped in this rug, which one of the men
gave me. Besides, every morning early I take a plunge and a swim in
the stream, and that makes me warm all day."

I shivered--I who feared the touch of cold water. Yet there with all
his hardships, he stood before me, the model of healthy boyhood.
Alas! I envied him.

But this trying life, which he made so light of, could not go on.
"What shall you do when winter comes?"

John looked grave. "I don't know: I suppose I shall manage somehow-
-like the sparrows," he answered, perceiving not how apposite his
illustration was. For truly he seemed as destitute as the birds of
the air, whom ONE feedeth, when they cry to Him.

My question had evidently made him thoughtful; he remained silent a
good while.

At last I said: "John, do you remember the woman who spoke so
sharply to you in the alley that day?"

"Yes. I shall never forget anything which happened that day," he
answered, softly.

"She was my nurse once. She is not such a bad woman, though trouble
has sharpened her temper. Her biggest boy Bill, who is gone off for
a soldier, used to drive your cart, you know."

"Yes?" said John, interrogatively; for I was slow in putting forth my
plans--that is, as much of them as it was needful he should know.

"Sally is poor--not so very poor, though. Your twopence a night
would help her; and I dare say, if you'll let me speak to her, you
might have Bill's attic all to yourself. She has but one other lad
at home: it's worth trying for."

"It is indeed. You are very kind, Phineas." He said no more words
than these--but their tone spoke volumes.

I got into my little carriage again, for I was most anxious not to
lose a day in this matter. I persuaded John to go at once with me to
Sally Watkins. My father was not to be seen; but I ventured to leave
word for him that I was gone home, and had taken John Halifax with
me: it was astonishing how bold I felt myself growing, now that
there was another beside myself to think and act for.

We reached Widow Watkins' door. It was a poor place--poorer than I
had imagined; but I remembered what agonies of cleanliness had been
inflicted on me in nursery days; and took hope for John.

Sally sat in her kitchen, tidy and subdued, mending an old jacket
that had once been Bill's, until, being supplanted by the grand red
coat, it descended upon Jem, the second lad. But Bill still
engrossed the poor mother's heart--she could do nothing but weep over
him, and curse "Bonyparty." Her mind was so full of this that she
apparently failed to recognise in the decent young workman, John
Halifax, the half-starved lad she had belaboured with her tongue in
the alley. She consented at once to his lodging with her--though she
looked up with an odd stare when I said he was "a friend" of mine.

So we settled our business, first all together, then Sally and I
alone, while John went up to look at his room. I knew I could trust
Sally, whom I was glad enough to help, poor woman! She promised to
make him extra-comfortable, and keep my secret too. When John came
down she was quite civil to him--even friendly.

She said it would really be a comfort to her, that another fine,
strapping lad should sleep in Bill's bed, and be coming in and out of
her house just like her poor dear boy.

I felt rather doubtful of the resemblance, and indeed half-angry, but
John only smiled.

"And if, maybe, he'd do a hand's turn now and then about the kitchen-
-I s'pose he bean't above it?"

"Not a bit!" said John Halifax, pleasantly.

Before we left I wanted to see his room; he carried me up, and we
both sat down on the bed that had been poor Bill's. It was nothing
to boast of, being a mere sacking stuffed with hay--a blanket below,
and another at top; I had to beg from Jael the only pair of sheets
John owned for a long time. The attic was very low and small, hardly
big enough "to whip a cat round," or even a kitten--yet John gazed
about it with an air of proud possession.

"I declare I shall be as happy as a king. Only look out of the
window!"

Ay, the window was the grand advantage; out of it one could crawl on
to the roof, and from the roof was the finest view in all Norton
Bury. On one side, the town, the Abbey, and beyond it a wide stretch
of meadow and woodland as far as you could see; on the other, the
broad Ham, the glittering curve of Severn, and the distant country,
sloping up into "the blue bills far away." A picture, which in its
incessant variety, its quiet beauty, and its inexpressibly soothing
charm, was likely to make the simple, everyday act of "looking out o'
window," unconsciously influence the mind as much as a world of
books.

"Do you like your 'castle,' John?" said I, when I had silently
watched his beaming face; "will it suit you?"

"I rather think it will!" be cried in hearty delight. And my heart
likewise was very glad.

Dear little attic room! close against the sky--so close, that many a
time the rain came pattering in, or the sun beating down upon the
roof made it like a furnace, or the snow on the leads drifted so high
as to obscure the window--yet how merry, how happy, we have been
there! How often have we both looked back upon it in after days!



CHAPTER IV

Winter came early and sudden that year.

It was to me a long, dreary season, worse even than my winters
inevitably were. I never stirred from my room, and never saw anybody
but my father, Dr. Jessop, and Jael. At last I took courage to say
to the former that I wished he would send John Halifax up some day.

"What does thee want the lad for?"

"Only to see him."

"Pshaw! a lad out o' the tan-yard is not fit company for thee. Let
him alone; he'll do well enough if thee doesn't try to lift him out
of his place."

Lift John Halifax out of his "place"! I agreed with my father that
that was impossible; but then we evidently differed widely in our
definition of what the "place" might be. So, afraid of doing him
harm, and feeling how much his future depended on his favour with his
master, I did not discuss the matter. Only at every possible
opportunity--and they were rare--I managed to send John a little
note, written carefully in printed letters, for I knew he could read
that; also a book or two, out of which he might teach himself a
little more.

Then I waited, eagerly but patiently, until spring came, when,
without making any more fruitless efforts, I should be sure to see
him. I knew enough of himself, and was too jealous over his dignity,
to wish either to force him by entreaties, or bring him by stratagem,
into a house where he was not welcome, even though it were the house
of my own father.

One February day, when the frost had at last broken up, and soft,
plentiful rain had half melted the great snow-drifts, which, Jael
told me, lay about the country everywhere, I thought I would just put
my head out of doors, to see how long the blessed spring would be in
coming. So I crawled down into the parlour, and out of the parlour
into the garden; Jael scolding, my father roughly encouraging. My
poor father! he always had the belief that people need not be ill
unless they chose, and that I could do a great deal if I would.

I felt very strong to-day. It was delicious to see again the green
grass, which had been hidden for weeks; delicious to walk up and down
in the sunshine, under the shelter of the yew hedge. I amused myself
by watching a pale line of snowdrops which had come up one by one,
like prisoners of war to their execution.

But the next minute I felt ashamed of the heartless simile, for it
reminded me of poor Bill Watkins, who, taken after the battle of
Mentz, last December, had been shot by the French as a spy. Poor,
rosy, burly Bill! better had he still been ingloriously driving our
cart of skins.

"Have you been to see Sally lately?" said I, to Jael, who was cutting
winter cabbages hard by; "is she getting over her trouble?"

"She bean't rich, to afford fretting. There's Jem and three little
'uns yet to feed, to say nought of another big lad as lives there,
and eats a deal more than he pays, I'm sure."

I took the insinuation quietly, for I knew that my father had lately
raised John's wages, and he his rent to Sally. This, together with a
few other facts which lay between Sally and me, made me quite easy in
the mind as to his being no burthen, but rather a help to the widow--
so I let Jael have her say; it did no harm to me nor anybody.

"What bold little things snowdrops are--stop, Jael, you are setting
your foot on them."

But I was too late; she had crushed them under the high-heeled shoe.
She was even near pulling me down, as she stepped back in great hurry
and consternation.

"Look at that young gentleman coming down the garden; and here I be
in my dirty gown, and my apron full o' cabbages."

And she dropped the vegetables all over the path as the "gentleman"
came towards us.

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